The Dangers of
"First
Person Shooter" Video Games

FPSdanger.com

(This was first
written by me for my personal website over ten years ago. Back
when
Quake
and Doom were the big games. They didn't even have the
term
"First Person Shooter" back then. It intrigued ShowTime enough to
have me on a Penn & Teller's Bullshit episode, and I think
it
all applies more than ever, so I'll leave it be for now.)

Please
note -- this is about games in which the player uses guns and other
real-world
weapons against human-like characters. This is not about
defending
yourself from an attacking Dinosaur, or using a broadsword or magical
spells.
Yes, they are a bit violent and this should be considered. But
they
aren't designed to damage your brain as the games I am writing
about.

Dylan Klebold
(one
of the killers) sits in the tan La-Z-Boy, chewing on a toothpick. Eric
Harris (another killer) adjusts his video camera a few feet away, then
settles into his chair with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a sawed-off
shotgun
in his lap. He calls it Arlene, after a favorite character in the gory
Doom video games and books that he likes so much.
.........
"It's going to be like f**king Doom," Harris says. "Tick, tick, tick,
tick...
Haa! That f**king shotgun is straight out of Doom!"

I first saw the
truly violent kill-kill-kill video games of today at my current job in
an Engineering department. About 5 or 10 people would play
Quake or Doom or the like at lunch time over our local network, spend
the
half hour repetitively and violently killing each other for a half hour
each day, day after day, week after week, year after year.

One of the
players
was even a Minister who had finished his training and was about to
leave
the company for a full time job as a church's minister. I asked
him
and he saw just nothing wrong with machine gunning, burning, blowing
up,
dismembering, and exploding people in a game, it was just a game, just
good clean fun. I suggested a new game -- The Abortion Game!
Players with coat hangers would chase pregnant women around the screen
trying to pop them! Oh My God! That would be awful, sinful,
terrible! Machine gun someone, burn them with a flame-thrower,
but
no abortions, real or not!!!! He had been totally desensitized to
these acts of extreme violence by the game. His first hand real
knowledge
of this world made him treat abortion in any setting with revulsion --
but his unrealistic, synthetic knowledge of machine gunning people made
it "fun" in the right setting. It really is a horrible thing,
never
thought of as fun in any situation by anyone who knows the reality of
the
action.

These video games
are almost 75% pure killing. Not a 10 minute hunt with a kill at
the end. Blast, kill, blow up, shoot, bang, kill, kill.
They
attempt to simulate all the weapons in our real world as exactly as
possible
-- but they show the worst, most totally incorrect portrayal of the
results
of their use. People don't suffer, don't even feel pain,
just
quickly die and gracefully depart, leave no children behind, with no
legal
or moral repercussions.

So, if we believe
the claims of no harm done by the game makers, this is the big picture
we are asked to buy:

Video
simulations of
real world situations are used to train commercial pilots, police
officers,
etc. When they find themselves in the real world situation of
landing
with an engine out, or a suspect reaches for a gun, the "experience"
from
the simulator kicks right in and guides their actions. They
have
been "programmed" to take specific actions in certain circumstances
without
even thinking.

Virtual
reality
environments
are allowing phobia patients to overcome their fears -- they experience
what would be high stress situations in the safety of VR, their mind
incorporates
them as real experiences, and they react differently in the real
world.
Powerful inhibitions against some actions have been removed.

The constant
playing
of violent video games, the constant virtual reality of killing again
and
again and again without even the slightest consequence, without even
seeing
anyone so much as someone in pain has no effect on anyone at
all.

Yeah, right.
Still
just "Gee, why are kids so violent these days? What could it
be?
What a coincidence that the ones who run amok just happen to play Doom
for 16 hours a day." (If you know of any of our
recent
student mass-murders who didn't, please drop me a line.)

Parents -- Wake
Up! Let's stop giving our kids a path to become sociopaths,
there
are enough to go around without intentionally making
anymore.
No, I don't think these games will drive every well adjusted kid
to be violent. But if they become outcasts, loners, feel
wronged
and not listened to, these games pave the way to violence, remove the
inhibitions.
"take the safety off."

Keep your kids
away from these games!

8/26/99

A
lot of Doom, etc. players have written me. They tell me they
play
the game many hours each day, but they don't feel violent or act
violently.
Some write and say it is absurd that everyone who plays these games
will
become violent.

No, I don't think
anyone
and everyone who plays will become violent, or will do something
violent
someday. I wouldn't think any of you would feel all that
different
after playing the game, different as in more violent. If it was
that
simple -- kids played doom, felt all violent and went out and hurt
people,
it would be an easy problem to see and solve, wouldn't it? The
effect
is very subtle, it does no real harm in most people -- but when it does
it is profoundly dangerous.

An excellent book
about all this is called
On Killing -- The Psychological Cost of
Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman. He
calls
these types of games and other ways society conditions us to
violence
"Taking the safety catch off of a nation." The Section Killing
in America -- What Are We Doing to Our Children is eye-opening,
especially
the Chapter
B.F. Skinner's Rats and Operant Conditioning at the Video
Arcade. You can read a lot more about this book, and
buy
it at Amazon.com.

Doom-type games
do
a thing to a player's mind called Operant Conditioning. It was
pioneered
by Dr. B. F. Skinner, who had a thing called a Skinner Box you might
want
to read about. Did you know that in World War 2, only 15%
of US troops fired back when the enemy charged them? The other
85%
just could not bring themselves to kill another person, even if their
own
life was at risk. In Vietnam,
95% of our troops fired back.
Know why so many did? Because the military used Operant
Conditioning
on them. It was almost exactly like playing Doom in the
psychology
used, in the use of simulation where no one was actually hurt. In
most people's brain there is this little link between killing someone
and
"Yuk!" Conditioning unplugs it and connects it to "Cool!"
You
don't feel changed after it, it just hides in the back of your
head.
But it does change you, changes you forever.

Here is a quote
from
the book of what a Vietnam solider wrote about it:

When
I went to boot camp and did individual combat training they said if you
walk intoan
ambush what you want to do is just do a right face - you just turn
right
or left,whichever
way the fire is coming from, and you assault. I said "Man, That's
crazy, I'dnever
do anything like that. It's Stupid."

The
first time we came under fire, on Hill 1044 in Beauty Cannon in Laos,
we
did itautomatically.
Just like you look at your watch to see what time it is. We done
a rightface,
assaulted the hill - a fortified position with concrete bunkers
emplaced,
machineguns,
automatic weapons - and we took it. And we killed - I'd estimate
probably 35North
Vietnamese soldiers in the assault, and we only lost three killed....

But
you know, what they teach you, it doesn't faze you until it comes down
to the time touse
it, but it's in the back of your head, like, What do you do when you
come
to a Stopsign?
It's in the back of your head and you react automatically.

-- Vietnam Veteran
quoted in Gwynne Dyer, War

And here is a quote
from On Killing:

"Through
operant conditioning B. F. Skinner held that he could turn any
child into anything he wanted. In Vietnam the US armed
forces
proved that Skinner was at least partially correct by successfully
using
operant conditioning to turn adolescents into the most effective
fighting
force the world has ever seen. And America seems intent on using
Skinner's methodology to turn us into an extraordinary violent society."

I really do care
about
all the people playing it, or I wouldn't bother to write what I
do.
Players, please be careful with your mind. So many fun games out
there that don't damage it.

A final
word.
In case this makes any difference, I'm not some ultra-non-violence type
-- I love guns! One gun that I own is in so many games and movies
I've seen a page just
to
list them all, the SPAS-12 shotgun.

I have a real
SPAS-12 accessible if something goes bump in the night, or someone is
ripping
off my car. While I am very comfortable with the gun
itself,
when I pick it up I always want to be a bit uncomfortable -- a
bit
not-relaxed.
It is a loaded gun and the slightest screw-up can change my
whole
life. And I can tell you, the very last thing on earth I'd want
to
do is run several hundred hours of a VR simulation game shooting an
exact
copy SPAS-12 shotgun at everything that moves, training myself till it
was fun, comfortable, just a game. It isn't.

Don't write
and
say
I think all violent games cause all kids to be violent, I just don't.

Please read
the
two underlined
sentences up a ways, click here if you can't find
them.
No point in writing this exact same thing again, is there? And if
that is what you want to write, read what follows them, it just might
make
you think.

I want to make one
point
completely clear. Many people seem to think that I am proposing
government
control of the media, that video games make people violent, or other
such
sweeping issues. I have one specific concern -- that this
specific
type of game damages or removes a basic inhibition inside our brains
against
killing other human beings. Please read that carefully, and
please
don't add anything to it. If you're never put in a position in
life
that fills you with so much anger and rejection that you want to kill,
it will have no effect on your life. If you are part of the very
small group of kids that do feel this kind of anger, the lack of this
inhibition
can result in these tragedies we read about -- and puzzle as to how
anyone
could do such a thing.

And I'm not
advocating
any sort of censorship whatsoever -- I am a Libertarian and find
censorship
repugnant. My message is to kids in the hope they will see what
the
truth is and avoid such games, and to parents to try to guide their
kids
away from the danger. I think hard drugs should be legal -- but
parents
have the duty to keep them away from their kids till they grow up, and
the consequences of drug use should be made very clear so that adults
can
make informed decisions. These games should be dealt with in the
same way -- people making choices, not Big Brother watching over us.

Also, if you
think
this are all just some observations on my part, they aren't -- I've
just
repeated a few of the basic ideas from Choices
and Consequences: Trained to Kill (If that link dies, try this
one) -- if you have time to write, surely you have the time to read
the article first?